Tom Melville and George Mische, who have worked for more than 40 years to change U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam, the Middle East, South America and Iraq, will speak at Benedictine University from 12:20-1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 24 in the Krasa Center Rooms A, B and C.
Sponsored by the Department of History, Philosophy and Religious Studies, the presentation is part of a tour promoting Melville’s book, “Through A Glass Darkly: The U.S. Holocaust in Central America,” which claims that United States foreign policy in Guatemala and elsewhere contributed to the deaths of more than 300,000 people since the Eisenhower administration.
Melville and Mische first came to prominence in 1968 when they participated in burning draft files in Catonsville, Md. Each of the members of the “Catonsville Nine” was sentenced to federal prison. Melville served 18 months and Mische served 25 months. The event was chronicled in Daniel Berrigan’s play, “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,” recently revived at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Los Angeles by Tim Robbins, Martin Sheen, Leiv Schreiber, Sandra Oh and others.
Melville was ordained as a Maryknoll priest in 1957 and sent to Guatemala. He and a number of other Maryknollers were expelled for their opposition to the U.S.-back government in 1967. Melville earned a doctorate from American University, spent a number of years living in Chile and currently lives in Mexico.
Melville spent years researching U.S. State Department archives for his book, which explores U.S. foreign policy during the past 50 years.
Mische has been active politically on the local, state and national level; has worked as a labor organizer, negotiator and arbitrator; has lectured extensively in North and Central America on U.S. foreign policy, and is currently working on a book about the history of the Catholic peace movement since Vietnam.
The presentation will deal with the question of what needs to be done to force a change in the policies of government, corporations and religious institutions which contribute to much of the violence in the world.
For more information about the presentation, contact Tonia Rucker at (630) 829-6250.

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Benedictine University is an independent Roman Catholic institution located in Lisle, Illinois just 25 miles west of Chicago. Founded in 1887, Benedictine provides 56 undergraduate majors, 16 graduate and four doctorate programs. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently ranked Benedictine University as the seventh fastest-growing campus among private nonprofit master’s universities, and Forbes magazine named Benedictine among the top 20 percent of America’s colleges for 2011. Benedictine University’s Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) program is listed by Crain’s Chicago Business as the fourth largest in the Chicago area in 2011.